Night 1: A Mobile City
The first night of camp was at Bay Meadows (yes, the horse racing track!). I had just walked through the applause of camp volunteers who were waiting at the Day 1 finish line…and was feeling good but ready to get off my knee. The “finish line” for Day 1 was not such a big deal…the real power of Day 1 was in the route, not the finish.
Once through the finish line, we were immediately sent to get our gear and tents off of the gear trucks. There was no one to carry your stuff but you, no matter how much you ached or were tired. Once we had our 30lb bags, we schlepped them (what seemed like miles) to assigned tent sites. We had to set-up our own tents and tote our gear back and forth to trucks every am and pm (the camp joke that night was whether you thought the actual walk or the camp check-in was more grueling that day!). Once everything was set-up at my tent-site, I struck out on another long walk to get to the showers.
In our mobile city, huge trucks housed the portable showers. If you had told me I’d enjoy showering in a truck with dozens of strangers I would have laughed…but it was GREAT! The water was hot and felt soooooo incredibly good at that point. Then it was off to the Medical tent to tend to blisters and ice my knee. Talk about the walking wounded! Lots of ugly, severely blistered feet out there. Lots of bandaged legs, shins, and knees. Hundreds of people icing some part of their body. A few people even in crutches. And sadly, I saw a walker taken by ambulance to the hospital due to severe dehydration (and most of these people, like me, had been training for months!). There was a physical therapist, chiropractor and massage therapist. People were lined up in a triage type of arrangement…the worst cases got the most attention…a lot of problems were simply dealt with using lots of ice. The whole thing reminded me of a scene out of M.A.S.H. (but without all the blood)!
Much like the shower, dinner was shear ecstasy…was it really that good or was I just incredibly hungry? I went to bed early but between porta-potty doors slamming and late-night conversations from thousands of tents, I didn’t sleep well. I was worried about how my knee was feeling, and thinking about the challenges to come tomorrow. I got up once during the night to pee, and with flashlight in hand found my way to the porta-potties. Let me just say that there is nothing quite like stepping out of that dark porta-potty and looking out at thousands of tents that look the same while realizing you aren’t sure which aisle you need to turn down to get back to yours! |
